To the perverse all courtships probably are quaint; but if ever human
nature may be allowed the full range of originality, it may very well be
in the exciting and very personal moments of making love. Our own
peculiar social structure, in which the sexes have so much innocent
freedom, and youth is left almost entirely to its own devices in the
arrangement of double happiness, is so favorable to the expression of
character at these supreme moments, that it is wonderful there is so
little which is idiosyncratic in our wooings. They tend rather to a
type, very simple, very normal, and most people get married for the
reason that they are in love, as if it were the most matter-of-course
affair of life. They find the fact of being in love so entirely
satisfying to the ideal, that they seek nothing adventitious from
circumstance to heighten their tremendous consciousness.

Yet, here and there people, even American people, are so placed that
they take from the situation a color of eccentricity, if they impart
none to it, and the old, old story, which we all wish to have end well,
zigzags to a fortunate close past juts and angles of individuality which
the heroes and heroines have not willingly or wittingly thrown out. They
would have chosen to arrive smoothly and uneventfully at the goal, as by
far the greater majority do; and probably if they are aware of looking
quaint to others in their progress, they do not like it. But it is this
peculiar difference which renders them interesting and charming to the
spectator. If we all love a lover, as Emerson says, it is not because of
his selfish happiness, but because of the odd and unexpected chances
which for the time exalt him above our experience, and endear him to our
eager sympathies. In life one cannot perhaps have too little romance in
affairs of the heart, or in literature too much; and in either one may
be as quaint as one pleases in such affairs without being ridiculous.

W.D.H.

AN ENCORE

BY MARGARET DELAND

According to Old Chester, to be romantic was just one shade less
reprehensible than to put on airs. Captain Alfred Price, in all his
seventy years, had never been guilty of airs, but certainly he had
something to answer for in the way of romance.

However, in the days when we children used to see him pounding up the
street from the post-office, reading, as he walked, a newspaper held at
arm's length in front of him, he was far enough from romance. He was
seventy years old, he weighed over two hundred pounds, his big head was
covered with a shock of grizzled red hair; his pleasures consisted in
polishing his old sextant and playing on a small mouth-harmonicon. As to
his vices, it was no secret that he kept a fat black bottle in the
chimney-closet in his own room; added to this, he swore strange oaths
about his grandmother's nightcap. "He used to blaspheme," his
daughter-in-law said, "but I said, 'Not in my presence, if you please!'
So now he just says this foolish thing about a nightcap." Mrs. Drayton
said that this reform would be one of the jewels in Mrs. Cyrus Price's
crown; and added that she prayed that some day the Captain would give up
tobacco and _rum_. "I am a poor, feeble creature," said Mrs. Drayton; "I
cannot do much for my fellow men in active mission-work. But I give my
prayers." However, neither Mrs. Drayton's prayers nor Mrs. Cyrus's
active mission-work had done more than mitigate the blasphemy; the "rum"
(which was good Monongahela whiskey) was still on hand; and as for
tobacco, except when sleeping, eating, playing on his harmonicon, or
dozing through one of Dr. Lavendar's sermons, the Captain smoked every
moment, the ashes of his pipe or cigar falling unheeded on a vast and
wrinkled expanse of waistcoat.

No; he was not a romantic object. But we girls, watching him stump past
the schoolroom window to the post-office, used to whisper to each other,
"Just think! _he eloped_."

There was romance for you!

To be sure, the elopement had not quite come off, but, except for the
very end, it was all as perfect as a story. Indeed, the failure at the
end made it all the better: angry parents, broken hearts,--only, the
worst of it was, the hearts did not stay broken! He went and married
somebody else; and so did she. You would have supposed she would have
died. I am sure, in her place, any one of us would have died. And yet,
as Lydia Wright said, "How could a young lady die for a young gentleman
with ashes all over his waistcoat?"

However, when Alfred Price fell in love with Miss Letty Morris, he was
not indifferent to his waistcoat, nor did he weigh two hundred pounds.
He was slender and ruddy-cheeked, with tossing red-brown curls. If he
swore, it was not by his grandmother nor her nightcap; if he drank, it
was hard cider (which can often accomplish as much as "rum"); if he
smoked, it was in secret, behind the stable. He wore a stock, and (on
Sunday) a ruffled shirt; a high-waisted coat with two brass buttons
behind, and very tight pantaloons. At that time he attended the Seminary
for Youths in Upper Chester. Upper Chester was then, as in our time, the
seat of learning in the township, the Female Academy being there, too.
Both were boarding-schools, but the young people came home to spend
Sunday; and their weekly returns, all together in the stage, were
responsible for more than one Old Chester match....

"The air," says Miss, sniffing genteelly as the coach jolts past the
blossoming May orchards, "is most agreeably perfumed. And how fair is
the prospect from this hilltop!"

"Fair indeed!" responded her companion, staring boldly.

Miss bridles and bites her lip.

"_I_ was not observing the landscape," the other explains, carefully.

In those days (Miss Letty was born in 1804, and was eighteen when she
and the ruddy Alfred sat on the back seat of the coach)--in those days
the conversation of Old Chester youth was more elegant than in our time.
We, who went to Miss Bailey's school, were sad degenerates in the way of
manners and language; at least so our elders told us. When Lydia Wright
said, "Oh my, what an awful snow-storm!" dear Miss Ellen was displeased.
"Lydia," said she, "is there anything 'awe'-inspiring in this display of
the elements?"

"No, 'm," faltered poor Lydia.

"Then," said Miss Bailey, gravely, "your statement that the storm is
'awful' is a falsehood. I do not suppose, my dear, that you
intentionally told an untruth; it was an exaggeration. But an
exaggeration, though not perhaps a falsehood, is unladylike, and should
be avoided by persons of refinement." Just here the question arises:
what would Miss Ellen (now in heaven) say if she could hear Lydia's
Lydia, just home from college, remark--But no: Miss Ellen's precepts
shall protect these pages.

But in the days when Letty Morris looked out of the coach window, and
young Alfred murmured that the prospect was fair indeed, conversation
was perfectly correct. And it was still decorous even when it got beyond
the coach period and reached a point where Old Chester began to take
notice. At first it was young Old Chester which giggled. Later old Old
Chester made some comments; it was then that Alfred's mother mentioned
the matter to Alfred's father. "He is young, and, of course, foolish,"
Mrs. Price explained. And Mr. Price said that though folly was
incidental to Alfred's years, it must be checked.

"Just check it," said Mr. Price.

Then Miss Letty's mother awoke to the situation, and said, "Fy, fy,
Letitia."

So it was that these two young persons were plunged in grief. Oh,
glorious grief of thwarted love! When they met now, they did not talk of
the landscape. Their conversation, though no doubt as genteel as before,
was all of broken hearts. But again Letty's mother found out, and went
in wrath to call on Alfred's family. It was decided between them that
the young man should be sent away from home. "To save him," says the
father. "To protect my daughter," says Mrs. Morris.

But Alfred and Letty had something to say.... It was in December; there
was a snow-storm--a storm which Lydia Wright would certainly have called
"awful"; but it did not interfere with true love; these two children met
in the graveyard to swear undying constancy. Alfred's lantern came
twinkling through the flakes, as he threaded his way across the hillside
among the tombstones, and found Letty just inside the entrance, standing
with her black serving-woman under a tulip-tree. The negress, chattering
with cold and fright, kept plucking at the girl's pelisse; but once
Alfred was at her side, Letty was indifferent to storm and ghosts. As
for Alfred, he was too cast down to think of them.

"Letty, they will part us."

"No, my dear Alfred, no!"

"Yes. Yes, they will. Oh, if you were only mine!"

Miss Letty sighed.

"Will you be true to me, Letty? I am to go on a sailing-vessel to China,
to be gone two years. Will you wait for me?"

Letty gave a little cry; two years! Her black woman twitched her sleeve.

"Miss Let, it's gittin' cole, honey."

"(Don't, Flora.)--Alfred, _two years!_ Oh, Alfred, that is an eternity.
Why, I should be--I should be twenty!"